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Category: Game Design

Being the Grown-up Gamer

2003-09-09 doycet Game Design One comment

Stumbled across an old article on Pyramid’s site entitled “How to keep Gaming after Adulthood”. The author makes some excellent

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Mashup, by gummint!

2003-08-28 doycet Game Design

Population: One: Monday Mashup #6: Huck Finn Huck, the quintessential youth, and Jim, the quintessential outsider, float down a river

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@puppet

2003-08-24 doycet Game Design 3 comments

WISH 61: Characters for Other People Come up with a character concept for one to three other gamers you know.

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Fantastic Who?

2003-08-20 doycet Game Design 3 comments

Population: One: Monday Mashup #5: Fantastic Four I don’t believe I’ve ever read any Fantastic Four of any kind, so

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Posting this to mention I’ve got nothing to post

2003-08-20 doycet Game Design

Roll the Bones: Role Call 28: Unusual settings What’s the most unusual setting in which your game has been set,

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“My hero bares his nerves along my wrist”

2003-08-15 doycet Game Design 3 comments

Without prelude or explanation, my Spycraft character.

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Mashup 4: Neuromancer meets…

2003-08-13 doycet Game Design

Population: One: Monday Mashup #4: Neuromancer. Let’s put this in a non-standard game system. How about the excellent Dreamwalker system/setting

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Mashup 3: Narnia

2003-08-13 doycet Game Design One comment

Population: One: Monday Mashup #3: Narnia First off, I have to say that I LOVED the meme-author’s take on this

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Mashup: Body Snatchers

2003-08-13 doycet Game Design

Population: One: Monday Mashup #2: Body Snatchers I say: Body Snatchers/Nobilis.

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Mashup: CSI

2003-08-13 doycet Game Design

The concept of this little excercise from Population: One is this: take a concept from a common or popular show,

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Verboten

2003-08-10 doycet Game Design 2 comments

Roll the Bones: Role Call 27: Verboten! If you were somehow forbidden from playing with your favorite system, genre or

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Assimilating the Straights

2003-08-08 doycet Game Design 3 comments

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 59: Games for Non-Gamers Name three games you might use to get someone who has never

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If I only have five of me.

2003-08-05 doycet Game Design

Roll the Bones: Role Call: DIY: Can you summarize two campaign concepts you’d create for player with identical tastes to

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Magical Box of Limited Expectation

2003-07-25 doycet Game Design

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 57: System, Setting, Style, and Play Do you find that you play differently when you play

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Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

2003-07-24 doycet Game Design 7 comments

Randy and I were having a conversation last night about character ideas and starting power levels. I’m one of those

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Having my druthers

2003-07-22 doycet Game Design 2 comments

Roll the Bones: Role Call 25: The ideal group: “What qualities would your ideal group possess?”

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Psychoanalysis and the Gamer

2003-07-21 doycet Game Design 7 comments

So my biggest problem with the games I’m running right now are: 1. Most are too big (have too many

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Wish

2003-07-18 doycet Game Design 4 comments

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 56: Friends and Associates Do your characters have friends and associates who play a regular role

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2003-07-07 doycet Game Design 3 comments

Roll the Bones: Role Call 24 Have you ever felt like it was time to take a break, short or

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Woulda coulda’s.

2003-07-07 doycet Game Design One comment

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 51: New Genres What are three genres that you?ve had limited exposure to as a gamer

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Schticks and Schtones

2003-07-07 doycet Game Design

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 53: Schtick What are three examples of physical or verbal schtick that you?ve used to develop

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Favorites

2003-06-24 doycet Game Design 2 comments

Role Call 23 What’s your favorite character you’ve made up for a game that you never got to play? Hmm.

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Faves

2003-05-27 doycet Game Design One comment

I’m combining two role call questions into one post. Role Call 19: In what pre-fab roleplaying setting have you had

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Matrix/Nobilis connection

2003-05-15 doycet Game Design

Just seen it. No spoilers. I will, however, say that as much as the first Matrix could ‘map’ to the

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Nefarious Plots

2003-05-09 doycet Game Design One comment

WISH 46: Plot, Plot, Plot How do you define the word ?plot? in a roleplaying game? What is plot and

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Ubiquitous

2003-05-06 doycet Game Design

I’m at that stage in learning/absorbing a game where I eat/sleep/breathe the thing. Unrelated: This is real turning point —

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“I’ve got 13 points in Breaking Stuff, specialized in ‘The Plot'”

2003-05-05 doycet Game Design 3 comments

Note, the following meandering bit uses examples from X2, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet (and I’d recommend

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Shout out

2003-05-02 doycet Game Design 4 comments

WISH 45: Accolades and Warm Fuzzies Who are some gamers you admire and appreciate? Name three (or as many as

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Making Time

2003-05-02 doycet Game Design

WISH 37: Schedules and Circumstances How do you prioritize gaming in your life to make sure it happens on an

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Picky

2003-05-02 doycet Game Design

WISH 44: Picking Games Another old WISH that I’m getting caught up on. How do you choose games to join

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Doyce Testerman

Mostly actual play from online tabletop games, played on Roll20. Also random other stuff.

Doyce Testerman
Session 09 of our co-op playthrough of Ironsworn: Starforged.

We pause long enough to trade supplies with an old and deeply unsettling acquaintance: Anora Talin, a razor-sharp trader with too much insight and no hesitation about using it. What starts as a resupply stop turns into one of the biggest lore sessions of the campaign so far.

In this episode:

- the precursor map/tablet reveals more strange behavior
- Cole’s importance becomes clearer
- secrets about the Balefire and Cobalt Reach emerge
- a new faction concept appears: The Tethered
- Tinker risks deeper contact with the symbiote
- navigation experiments go very, very wrong
- we end with one of our favorite cliffhangers yet

Thanks for watching/listening along with our little corner of space.

2026 04 14
Sometimes, the story tells you it wants to be something else.
Timefoolery finds us once again.

2026 03 10
See the thing is, I called episode six "Crystal Snails", and then I got Vulfmon's Disco Snails stuck in my head, and then this happened. I'm so sorry.

I'm sorry if you've never heard of Disco Snails.
I'm sorry if you HAVE heard of Disco Snails.
Mostly, I'm sorry to Vulfmon.

Inside every snail shell is a tiny glowing gastropod
Precursors might be dead, or fled: transcended into spacey gods
But here they left behind these shiny slimy buggy bodies
These super freaky guards will slime and kill you as a hobby

Crystal snails, they’re on the walls and closing in on you with glowing trails
Their slime is poison that will make your nervous system FLAIL
They crawl into your suit and lick your face until you fail
To breathe! Because you cannot fight these snails

[Chorus]
Crystal what?
Crystal snails, they'rе leaving deadly trails
Crystal wherе?
Current position's in your engine
Crystal how?
They're on your ship, they've got the Drip
Crystal why?
They’re not ill-willers, they’re just killers.

There's bodies in the airlock, for the snails are on the loose
Watch your step, they're only one inch tall and they crawl right at you
They've synthesize deadly toxins up in their buggy bodies
This downright funkadelic bunch have come to start the party (P-p-p-party)

Crystal snails, they’re on the walls and closing in on you with glowing trails
Their slime is poison that will make your nervous system FLAIL
They crawl into your suit and lick your face until you fail
To breathe! Because you cannot fight these snails

[Chorus]
Crystal what?
Crystal snails, they'rе leaving deadly trails
Crystal wherе?
Current position's in your engine
Crystal how?
They're on your ship, they've got the Drip
Crystal why?
They’re not ill-willers, they’re just killers.

[Chorus]
Crystal what?
Crystal snails, they'rе leaving deadly trails
Crystal wherе?
Their location? In your station
Crystal how?
They're on your ship, they've got the Drip
Crystal why?
They’re not ill-willers, they’re just killers.
(With apologies to Vulfmon.)

Inside every snail shell is a tiny glowing gastropod
Precursors might be dead, or fled: transcended into spacey gods
But here they left behind these shiny slimy buggy bodies
These super freaky guards will slime and kill you as a hobby

Crystal snails, they’re on the walls and closing in on you with glowing trails
Their slime is poison that will make your nervous system fail
They crawl into your suit and lick your face until you fail
To breathe! Because you cannot fight these snails

[Chorus]
Crystal what?
Crystal snails, they'rе leaving deadly trails
Crystal wherе?
Current position's in your engine
Crystal how?
They're on your ship, they've got the Drip
Crystal why?
They're not ill-willer, they're just killers...

2026 03 03
Tinker and Quin engage in a time-honored spacer tradition (drinking and conspiracy theories) followed by another time-honored ironsworn tradition (fighting for your life).

2026 02 24 timebolted
We meet Quintin's daughter, and then head out on our main mission. Both of these go exactly as we expected, as usual.

2026 02 17

Music by Kevin MacLeod. Intro by kleber-kgf.
This game, man... this game....

A few notes: the audio is still uneven. I tried a few things, but I need to try a few more. Stay with us and I'll get it sorted, I promise.

2026 02 13
Kiri's symbiote saves him... from something, or for something?
Quinn pulls on the strings trailing from everyone on Providence Station.

2026 02 03
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